Care at a Distance Digital Technologies and Ageing in Transnational Families

Recent decades have seen significant international labor migration from India, including among nurses. When family members are spread around the world, what happens to their aging parents who remain at home? International migration may contribute to a crisis of care, as family members are not easily available to provide care while the government systems catering to older adults are insufficient to provide good care for all who might need it. However, scholars of transnational family life have argued that some kinds of care are possible at a distance with the help of digital technologies. This chapter explores how nurses from the South Indian state of Kerala, who migrate abroad for work, integrate mobile phones, smartphones, and webcams into caring for their aging parents at a distance by forming “transnational care collectives.” Within these collectives, care is enacted through practices such as frequent calling and telemonitoring. Through such practices, people and technologies co-create new norms of good elder care and filial duties, which transforms kinship and gender dynamics. The chapter concludes with several recommendations for policy, including stimulating new discourses of international labor migration and improving digital infrastructure and literacy to support transnational care collectives.